


Safe House

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Safe House [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Damian Wayne is still a kid, Families of Choice, Gen, Jason Todd has a heart, Jason Todd wears glasses, Lazarus Pit, This is now (my) canon so deal with it, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 03:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: The safe house was supposed to be empty.It was not. Damian rides out a storm with some unexpected company.





	Safe House

The safe house was supposed to be empty. The last time Damian had surveilled the tiny, one bedroom apartment, it had been neatly neglected—the cupboards fully stocked, the furniture sheeted, the air stale. It had been foolishly lax of him to assume that the apartment would remain untouched for so long, but his options had been limited.

Damian hesitated in the unlit entryway. He could see the light from the living room down the long, narrow hall, and the muffled chords of an acoustic guitar filtered out from a stereo. If he took a step backward, he could open the front door and slip out again before he was noticed. The only indication he had come at all would be the puddle of rainwater currently collecting about his boots.

Lightning flashed outside, followed by a growl of thunder. Damian shook his head, spattering the wall with rain from his hair. When he looked up again, a broad-shouldered silhouette stood in the light at the other end of the hall, one hand on the doorframe, the other holding a gun. 

“Damian?” 

Todd. Wonderful. Of all the potential occupants.

“I got caught in the rain,” Damian said. His upper lip twisted as he fought a grimace. Another thunderclap split the air, making the muscles in his calves tense.

The silhouette’s head tilted slightly. Damian could envision a white lock of hair falling across a piercing blue eye, considering him, though he couldn’t see for himself with the light in his face. He shivered, then wiped his running nose on the back of his hand.

“Leave your shoes on the mat,” Todd said after a pause. He turned back toward the living room and said over his shoulder, “I just cleaned the floors.”

Damian grumbled as he sat down on the welcome mat and unclasped his boots. What did Todd take him for, an animal? He wondered what the man had meant by “cleaned the floors,” though. He couldn’t picture Red Hood brandishing a mop, or on his hands and knees like Cinderella. 

Though the mental image made him snort, Damian took longer undoing his boots than he might have normally. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Hood’s more bloodthirsty days seemed to be behind him, at least as far as the hero community of Gotham was concerned, but he was far from predictable. Damian knew the outline of his mother’s ties to Red Hood’s genesis and had never been able to parse whether the man felt grateful or resentful, nor how those feelings then translated to Damian.

Damian realized as he padded down the hall in his socked feet that he had never been alone with Jason Todd before without someone else in the next room. The Manor had never felt so far away.

Damian expected to find the apartment much like he had seen it last, just with a few lights turned on, a few dustcovers pulled back. Instead, as he stepped blinking into the lit heart of the apartment, he found himself in a warm, comfortably appointed living room. The original furniture had been artfully arranged and new furnishings added. The living room now boasted a faded but plush area rug, a few potted plants, and a full bookshelf, none of which had been there before. It wasn’t a full room—the walls were still mostly bare, the furnishings either from IKEA or pulled from a curb—but it was lived in. Comfortable. Somehow, Damian had never pegged Todd as being one for comforts.

Todd was bent behind the open fridge door, rummaging on the shelves for something. The gun was nowhere to be seen. The older man didn’t bother to lift his head as he called, “You’re dripping on my floor. Bedroom’s that way. Go change.”

Damian looked the way Todd pointed and spotted the ajar door. He wondered, briefly, if Todd would wait until his back was turned before jumping him, but he made it into the bedroom without incident. Stupid. Hysterical.

Everything in Todd’s drawers were too big, almost laughably so. Damian scrubbed his hair with a hand towel, then set about rolling up the legs of the sweatpants he had grabbed. He remembered Grayson mentioning once how underfed and—he thought the word was _scrawny_ —Todd had been when he had first come to the Manor. Damian couldn’t believe it. The Todd he’d always known was larger-than-life. Case in point, the Han Solo t-shirt Damian chose to slip on that could double as a parasail.

Damian hung his uniform up to dry, then returned to the living room. Todd sat in a wingback chair next to the space heater, his socked feet propped up on a faded purple ottoman. He held a book in his lap and didn’t look up from its pages when Damian entered.

“This is my night off, so you better not have brought any crap with you. If I have to punch someone tonight, I’m gonna be ticked,” Todd muttered. He flicked a finger back toward the kitchen. “Tea. Counter.” He had already served himself with a porcelain cup and saucer that looked strangely similar to Alfred’s preferred set at the Manor.

Damian decided not to argue. The prospect of hot tea was too inviting.

After serving himself and doctoring the drink the way he liked (copious amounts of sugar and lemon), Damian returned to the living. He hesitated only a moment before eschewing the couch to sit cross-legged next to the space heater. The tea felt good, the warmth slipping down his throat into his belly to curl there like a sleepy cat. He stuck his nose into the cup and drew in a deep breath of the herbal scent before settling back to stare at Todd, who pointedly ignored him.

Normally, Damian was quite adept at silence. Not tonight.

“I didn’t know you read,” he blurted out when the strain became too much. Damian fought another grimace. He could almost hear Drake laughing at him.

Todd didn’t look up, but when he spoke, his tone was as dry as bone. “I did finish kindergarten. First grade, too.”

Damian could feel a heated flush crawling up his neck. “What I mean is I haven’t seen you read before. I didn’t know you liked it.”

Todd did glance up at that, peering up beneath dark brows and through— “I know you’ve been in my room, you snot. What do you mean you didn’t know?”

He had been, many times, though Damian wasn’t sure how Todd knew that. He had been careful to leave everything as he found it.

Damian shrugged as he shifted so his back more fully took the brunt of the heater’s output. “I assumed they were gifts from Father. You wear glasses?”

Todd blinked, taken aback by the rapid change of subject. “Uh, yeah,” he said as he reached up and adjusted the pair on the bridge of his nose. “I was farsighted as a kid. Got rid of it for a little while, but not forever, apparently.”

Damian hadn’t noticed the frameless lenses earlier, not until Todd looked up and his hair fell away from his forehead. They made him look less like a hoodlum and more like a scholar.

No. If Damian were honest with himself, it was more than that. He looked around again, taking in the homey living space, then looked back at Todd. With the warm, dim lights, settled in his wingback chair with a book, his spectacles, and the softest-looking sweater Damian had ever seen, Todd looked… well, he looked like Father.

Damian wondered if he knew, or what he would say if he did.

“Do you live here now?” Damian asked instead.

Todd settled back in his chair and closed his book. “You sure are chatty tonight, brat.”

His tone felt like showing teeth, but with the intention to playfully nip instead of to bite. That was something Damian understood, something that made sense to him even if he didn’t understand the exact _why_ of the playfulness. Damian took another sip of tea.

“I don’t live here. I don’t live anywhere.” Todd’s fingers rapped lightly against the book’s cover. “I stay here, sometimes.”

“Why tonight?”

Todd lifted one shoulder, a half-shrug Damian had seen him do before. “It’s my night off. I could smell a storm coming. No one ever comes here.” He angled his head at Damian. “Why so many questions?”

Damian wasn’t sure himself, to be honest. Todd was… He couldn’t say. Grayson insisted that they were brothers, and not merely by law. But Damian _knew_ Grayson. He knew Drake and Cain as well, though they had their own veils of inscrutability. He didn’t know Todd. What scraps of information he had were contradictory and, he suspected, muddled by the emotions of those who conveyed them. Not to mention the contradictory attitudes of Todd himself, who at times seemed to have no regard for anyone at Wayne Manor, but at other times would, well, take Damian in out of a storm and make him tea.

Aware Todd was watching him closely, Damian shifted on the floor and rotated the cup in his hands as he looked away. “Don’t flatter yourself, Todd. A worthy mind must always seek out new knowledge.” He hesitated, then added, “Besides, no one talks about you. Not truly.”

He peeked up at Todd through his eyelashes and so caught the twisted grimace on the man’s face before he could hide it behind his own teacup. “You mean other than as an object lesson,” Todd said.

“Or bogeyman,” Damian admitted, then hastened to add, “Not so much anymore, not now that you’ve stopped killing.”

“Have I?” the other man shot back, but Damian only frowned.

Todd took a sip of his tea, then muttered something about it being cold before rising and returning to the kitchen. Taking advantage of his absence, Damian picked up the book he had been reading. He had expected perhaps one of the pulpy detective novels that Father enjoyed, but instead found himself thumbing through a battered bind-up of _The Lord of the Rings_. It was a classic, to be sure, but weighty and heavily marked with carefully drawn blocks of yellow, pink, green, and blue. The inside cover had the stamped name of a secondhand shop, but the highlighted lines felt newer.

Still holding the book, Damian turned his attention back to the solitary bookshelf on the far wall. He could appreciate now the range of titles displayed—no, not displayed. _Hoarded._ For while the stacks were straightened and neat, the number of books overwhelmed the crooked little construction and made the plywood shelves bow. Damian didn’t recognize all of the titles, but he could pick out 18th century romance novels, 19th century thrillers, translations of ancient poems and epics, modern adventures… the variety was endless. The owner seemed to have no niche focus but instead delighted in everything, though not a single tome looked new.

Then Damian caught sight of the end table. The small wooden table was also covered in books, but these were larger and newer. Setting aside his tea, Damian crawled forward until he was kneeling next to the stack and picked up the top book, which was the smallest.

 _Bullfinch’s Mythology._ Beneath it, covering a large, glossy textbook, was a syllabus.

Before Damian could read more than the header and the first few lines, Todd’s fingers pinched the top of the packet and yanked it from his hands.

“Snoop much?”

Out of habit, Damian scrabbled out of reach, putting the table between them. Todd dropped bodily into the wingback, cup held out to keep the tea from spilling, and scowled at Damian as he tidied the stack.

“You’re in _school_?”

“Don’t think I’m smart enough?” Todd snapped back.

That…wasn’t out of the question, though now that Todd said it aloud, Damian could hear how ridiculous the sentiment was. Of course Todd was _smart_ enough for anything, much less something as stupid as school. Red Hood’s base cunning was part of what made him such a formidable opponent and ally. Damian also couldn’t picture Father choosing to care about a stupid child. Intelligence was important to him. And even the thought of being quasi-related to an idiot pricked Damian’s pride. Todd was a Wayne. Sort of. Therefore, he must be intelligent.

Damian’s only rebuttal was a quick, dismissive shake of the head. There was a larger mystery at hand here.

“I _hate_ school,” he hissed. “You spend your days how you please, you patrol when and where you want. Why would you trade away even a fraction of that freedom for _school_?”

“I loved…” Jason paused, seeming to weigh the truth of his own words before tossing aside what he was going to say. “I didn’t love school either. I could hold my own, but P.S. 81 was an underfunded joke, and going to Gotham Prep was like getting tossed in a shark chum. I liked learning, though. Always have.”

The storm outside had kept its rumbles low enough that they were hid by the lightly piping radio in the corner of the room, but now a thunderclap roared outside, louder and closer than before. Damian startled but tried to hide his reaction by settling back on his haunches. 

Jason didn’t seem to notice, but he also reached for the finger-sized plastic speaker remote and bumped up the volume until the soft thrumming of a guitar hid the chaos outside once more. His voice was a notch louder as he continued, “I started auditing night classes last year. I didn’t know enough to keep everything running. Figured a business management class couldn’t hurt.”

Tea and storm were both forgotten as Damian listened and his curiosity grew. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Jason speak with unvarnished sincerity. On patrol and during his brief visits to the Manor (a courtesy to Alfred), he spoke mostly in sarcastic quips and outlandish euphemisms. When angry, he could be direct and viciously cutting, but when at rest, he seemed to relish avoiding a straight answer. Doing so now did seem to discomfit Jason. He faltered almost imperceptibly before admitting his ignorance for how to keep his crime racket afloat, and he kept his gaze on his cup of tea instead of on Damian. And yet he was doing it, and Damian discovered that he was wiling to do nearly anything to keep the confessions flowing.

“Did it help?” Damian asked when Jason fell silent.

Jason gave a shrugging sort of nod. “Some. Econ helped more. Supply and demand and all that. By then, I was hooked.”

“So you registered for night school. What is your area of study?” Damian asked. He wanted to guess English Literature, but again, Jason excelled at being unpredictable.

The question brought an unexpected sneer to Jason’s lips. “Dead people can’t register for college, Dames. I’ll just keep auditing. It’s fine.” The use of Grayson’s nickname, as much as the toxic bitterness in Jason’s voice, caught Damian by surprise.

“Father could—“ Damian drew up short as a finger jabbed at him.

“You breathe a word of this to Bruce and I’ll feed you to Killer Croc.” Todd had leaned forward in his chair to glower at Damian. The soft-spoken confessor was gone, replaced by the gravelly Red Hood. Unfortunately, he had lost his edge with Damian somewhere around his second cup of tea.

“I will be speaking nothing of this night to Father. He and Grayson know I evaded the storm by ducking into a nearby safe house. They don’t need to know you were here as well.” At Jason’s quizzical look, Damian rolled his eyes. “I will not subject myself to interrogation in order to fix your petty problems, Todd. I will defend Father’s honor with my life, but his oblique examinations are distasteful.”

Jason narrowed his eyes, making Damian roll his own again. “Tt. He wishes to know if you are well. He wishes to know if you seem well-rested, if you seem well-fed, if you seem happy, but will not ask. For a man adept at directness, he can be truly maddening. So you have nothing to fear. I have no wish to subject myself to such foolishness.”

Jason seemed to believe him. His shoulders released their tension and he chuckled as he reached out and ruffled Damian’s hair. His smirk widened into a grin as Damian yanked himself out of reach and quickly smoothed down the mussed strands. “I’ve never heard you talk smack about B before, brat. It’s a good look on you. There may be hope for you yet.”

Damian scowled, but then admitted, “You are not as odious as I first believed.” He didn’t want to speak what had been in the back of his mind for weeks now, but his honor and pride demanded it. “I… understand that you were instrumental in my return. Thank you.”

Jason frowned and tugged on the cuffs of his sweater until the sleeves pulled up almost to his knuckles. “I wasn’t given a choice. Probably wouldn’t have helped if I had been.” Even as the words punched Damian in the chest, Jason looked up, blue eyes clear and uncharacteristically unguarded. “But you ended up with a better deal that I got, and I’m glad. So you’re welcome, or whatever.”

The older man drew in a breath, eyes flitting toward the curtained window, then back to Damian. “What got you tonight? The smell?”

Damian stiffened, remembering his nearly blind panic from earlier and preparing to deny it. But then the full question registered. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint what it was that had quickened his breath and rattled his pulse, only known that his unease had quickly multiplied and compounded until he had found himself huddled and shaking in an alcove, staring at the fingers of lightning raking the sky. He had fled to the closest point of safety, desperate to be somewhere dry and quiet. Somewhere safe. That instinct had led him to this apartment.

“It’s the ozone,” Jason explained, his voice almost gentle. “The smell in the air during a big thunderstorm. It smells like the Pit.”

 _Oh._ Damian wouldn’t have been able to unearth the knowledge from his own subconscious, but once Jason linked the two, the sense came flooding back. He didn’t remember much from the Pit other than his terror and confusion, but that sharp, almost metallic, unearthly smell…

“It took me a long time to piece it together.” Jason’s voice was quiet, nearly lost beneath the guitar. “I thought it was the storm itself, the rain and the thunder and the lightning. And it is, somewhat, for me. It was storming when I… came back.”

When he had clawed himself out of his own grave, he meant. Damian shuddered. At least he hadn’t had to do that. At least Father had been there at his side.

Jason either ignored Damian’s shudder or misinterpreted it. He tapped his cup. “Aromatic tea helps. Fills your nose with something else. I like using one of Alfred’s blends. Happier memories.” He tilted his head in the direction of the radio. “Music, for the noise. And distractions.” Classwork abandoned in favor of a retreat into a familiar fantasy.

“I should have warned you.” Jason’s mouth was turned down, but not in anger, or if it were, it was at himself. It was, Damian realized, what Jason looked like when he felt guilty, and he filed away the knowledge for later. “When you came back so different, I didn’t think you’d have the same issues.”

Damian considered protesting his “issues.” Considered lying and telling Jason—the way he had told Father, had told Grayson, had told Alfred and Drake and Cain and Brown and Jon—that he was _fine_. Instead, he heard himself admit, “I thought I was broken. I’ve never been afraid of storms before.”

“It sucks,” Jason agreed, and for once his forthrightness soothed instead of rubbing Damian raw. “And it may never get completely better. But you’ll learn how to cope.”

Damian rolled the thought around his his mind, then jerked his chin in a short nod. He preferred fixed, but he could accept coping.

Jason pushed himself to his feet, now-empty cup in hand. “I’m headed to bed. Stay the night, get out in the morning. Just text Dick or B before you go to sleep so they don’t come busting down my door.”

After the small couch was dressed with spare linens and the speaker remote was moved within reach, Jason picked up his book and headed to the bedroom door, pausing briefly at the entrance to look back at Damian.

“Remember our deal. I wasn’t here.” At Damian’s nod, Jason returned the gesture, then tapped his hand against the doorframe before saying, “I move around. I’ve got different places. But I keep all of them pretty well-stocked. First aid, snacks, tea, speaker system. You should start adding to your belt, but if you get caught out again, let me know." Jason’s smile was a flash in the dark, brighter than any lightning. "I may or may not answer.”

Damian blinked at the darkness, then decided to put off any decisions until they became necessary. He typed out one last text to Grayson— _Safe. Staying the night._ —then rolled over and buried his nose in the sleeve of the Han Solo t-shirt. He was asleep before the next low peal of thunder. It didn’t wake him.

**Author's Note:**

> Cylobaby27 and I had a superb conversation about the younger kids' misconceptions about Jason. Her fic "This Above All" (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15655116) came out of it and is excellent, as did the seeds for this fic. I 100% plucked the concept of Jason in glasses from her, so credit where credit is due. ;)


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